1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a billing system, a billing-information generation apparatus, a billing-information generation method, and a computer readable recording medium which records a billing-information generation program.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the rapid spread of the Internet in recent years, the amount of data distributed over the network is rapidly increasing. To cope with this, IP (Internet Protocol) Multicast which can distribute the same data to a large number of unspecified users, so called multicast data, at one time is becoming widespread (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-368757).
In recent years, there is provided a same data simultaneous distribution service to portable telephone terminals utilizing Multicast which distributes the same data to a large number of unspecified terminals as described above. In simultaneous distribution services, communication carriers have been practicing monthly fixed-rate billings to subscribers (users) and the billing (of network usage charge) to content providers who offer Multicast services.
However, there is a problem with the billing method as described above in that the billing targets are limited. That is, even if a subscriber is subscribing to monthly fixed-rate distribution service, there is a possibility that, in reality, the subscriber will not receive the data because of reasons such as cases when the mobile telephone terminal of the subscriber is not powered on at the time of data distribution, and when the terminal is not in the distribution area.
Moreover, since the volume of the data to be distributed varies widely, there is a possibility that the subscriber will not receive as much data as matches the monthly fixed-rate charge, or on the contrary will receive excessive data to the standard rate of data billing.
Further, from the viewpoint of the communications carriers, the range of the billing target has been narrowed because only monthly fixed-rate service billing to subscribers and the billing to content providers can be realized.